“What are you doing, Dad?” my son asked when he called me on his cell phone.

I was sitting on our back patio, admiring the work I’d done, having just planted the first third of my garden with the non-genetically modified seeds I had oh-so carefully selected. I wanted to come as close as I could to having an organic garden.

Then just as I leaned back to relax, I stood up straight, squinting at the tractor spraying the field behind my house. It was coming closer and closer to my garden.

“Few bonds in life are more influential than those between a young person and an adult.”
— Unknown author

Washington County High School seniors will be graduating this week. It is a momentous milestone in their lives. They will leave their family and friends, and their decisions, good and bad, will decide their lives for decades to come. My son is among those students.

That’s another way of asking, will your bothersome neighbor’s heavenly mansion be next to yours? Before you petition heaven’s city council for a privacy fence or request that your bad neighbor be confined to the eternal promised land’s back forty, make sure you yourself aren’t unwittingly the neighbor from hell who somehow slipped under the pearly gates unnoticed while St. Peter was distracted by a game of heavenly baseball.

When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.– Pauline R. Kezer

Have you ever wondered what Relay for Life is all about? Read on because you’re about to get a real rundown.

FRANKFORT – We are each called upon to serve others in our lives. For some, this duty to the greater good means military service. Young men and women from across the Commonwealth step up to meet this challenge again and again, knowing well the risks. Yet, they still take that sacred vow to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic.

Growing up, my mother was like a lighthouse to me: Her light was always on, a beacon guiding me through the daily adventures and the bumps and bruises of childhood and adolescence. At the end of the day, she was always there, welcoming me to the safe harbor that was my home.

Years later, when I left home for other places, and the home lights were but a distant flicker, I would remind myself of Mom’s words. And often, they would light my path.

We all make choices in life that determine where we will be in the future. Some are minor choices, some are major choices, but each one guides our life forward like the rudder of a ship. I’m not going to lie. There are many things I would have done differently as I look back on my life.

I was thinking about that the other day when I visited St. Dominic for its science fair. I saw all the bright young kids that are in the beginning of their lives with so many decisions ahead of them.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” is the generalized response from those who had some familiarity with the Tsarnaev brothers. They seemed like the kind of young men you might like as neighbors; they appeared kind, quiet, unobtrusive.

These two, perpetrators of the Boston bombings? It just doesn’t make sense.

One day one of my kids asked me to read a written homework assignment that required a lot of research.

I looked it over and was pleasantly surprised that it was really quite good for a high school student. So I told the kid, “Hey, I like that. That’s good. It’s well-phrased and makes sense. You’re going to be a good writer.”